Reform UK - A symptom of all that is wrong?

[JagLover]

otolith said:

JagLover said:

Well yes

One reason for the collapse of the Tory vote is their failure to deal with illegal migration. Keeping it going for "popularity reasons" doesn't seem a winning strategy. Latest poll has Tories at 20%.

They made it an issue and invited the public to judge them on their performance on it because they thought it was something they could be seen to fix. Catastrophically wrongly.

I'm not really sure they "made it an issue". Everyone can see tens of thousands of people arriving by boat from France and support or oppose it depending on their political views. It is far more open and blatant than past methods of illegal migration.

The Tories have then made a pretence that they will put a stop to it, but they have been driven to it in my view as so many of their voters are opposed.

[Dave200]

Jinx said:

Dave200 said:

No. Those racists have been busy banging on about how we're a soft touch, and how we'll give a home and income to anyone who turns up on these shores regardless of status. That's not the same as saying that the system has been comprehensively broken by an incompetent government, resulting in the need to house hundreds of thousands of people while we process the backlog created by the system failure. Why weren't we seeing the same uproar about these people arriving 20 years ago when we took the same number of applications? Because then it wasn't politically prudent for right-wing agitators to spin it as a problem with the arrivals themselves rather than the system that processes them.

How about 14 years ago? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/apr/28/g...
Stop with the gaslighting.

That's only the same thing if you're desperate to defend the indefensible. We're talking about asylum seekers here, and the costs of housing them, as that's a key tenet of the Reform/Reclaim/UKIP manifesto. The article you've linked contains a complaint about "Eastern Europeans moving here" which at the time would have been completely legal under EU law, and absolutely in no way whatsoever related to asylum seekers. But you knew that, and were desperate to use the word "gaslighting".

[Dave200]

otolith said:

JagLover said:

Well yes

One reason for the collapse of the Tory vote is their failure to deal with illegal migration. Keeping it going for "popularity reasons" doesn't seem a winning strategy. Latest poll has Tories at 20%.

They made it an issue and invited the public to judge them on their performance on it because they thought it was something they could be seen to fix. Catastrophically wrongly.

They made it an issue and hoped that they could weaponise the racists and xenophobes into a more polarised right-wing base. Turns out that they were too incompetent to even do that, and they've haemorrhaged support as a result.

[chrispmartha]

Dagnir said:

cheesejunkie said:

turbobloke said:

That doesn't address what was posted, which said nothing about valid asylum cases as it mentioned "no valid reason for entry". Getting here by any means then playing the handwringers and lawyers in need of a new supercar by gaming the system - including finding a solicitor to create fictional back stories / sob stories - isn't valid.

https://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/2023-press-r...

It's been asked before, as to why the boats are there at all when France is a developed western country. Is there a (nonsensical) view that the boat people all have relatives here?. The reason is obvious, we have more bleedin' heart gullible types ripe to be conned, in positions of influence and on social media, and are seen that way outside as well as inside the country.

Because they don't want to live in France and many have valid reasons for having that opinion. There's a lot of crap talked about how they should stop in the first available safe country. It's crap.

Give them an easier access option. Properly fund the teams evaluating their applications including the ability to say no.

Don't sit and bh about immigrants whilst supporting the system that results in small boats.

So if they dont like France, that gives them the right to live here? Does that apply to everybody in the world?


We have zero obligation to anyone other than British citizens. No other person has the right to live here and they certainly don't have the right simply because they don't like the French.


What nonsense...

What nonsense indeed.

We do have an obligation to accept asylum seekers whether you like it or not.

You do realise the French take more Asylum seekers in than the UK don’t you?

[swisstoni]

otolith said:

JagLover said:

Well yes

One reason for the collapse of the Tory vote is their failure to deal with illegal migration. Keeping it going for "popularity reasons" doesn't seem a winning strategy. Latest poll has Tories at 20%.

They made it an issue and invited the public to judge them on their performance on it because they thought it was something they could be seen to fix. Catastrophically wrongly.

Right so they created a massive crisis costing £6m a day and really pissing off their base support.

And the plan was to quickly fix it and voila! Heroes!

Just the small matter of the courts, the house of lords, international law and refugee conventions to navigate. Oh and the French to cooperate.

Yes it’s really got the ring of truth about it.

[Dave200]

crankedup5 said:

Does it include refugees from Agfagastan, hong kong and other Countries. All of those people need infrastructure, which we cannot provide.That’s around 650,000 people. It’s all very well comparing numbers but the point is these numbers are year on year. Also look at the rise in immigrants arriving in small boats every day and compare that number to 20 years ago.
When Labour begin Governing the Country they intend to fast track the back log of asylum seekers, they haven’t yet mentioned where these people or how these people will be housed.
My axe grind is the Home Office providing houses, as I mentioned 16,000 homes set aside, when the indigenous population complain of not being able to afford a home. Something gone wrong.

I shared the numbers of people claiming asylum, which will include anyone claiming asylum. It doesn't matter if they come in small boats, hiding in lorries, or via legal means. The numbers of applicants are broadly the same as they were 20 years ago. The excessive focus on small boats is just another in a long line of failed attempts by the right wing agitants to polarise voters against asylum seekers while the system the Tories destroyed is failing to identify valid cases from the chancers. This is why applicants are being thrown in hotels and former barracks, and why locals are up in arms. This is why the xenophobes are parroting the twaddle about closing our borders. It's got nothing to do with the volume of people coming here, just the failure of the system and its symptoms. And for that we have the Tories to thank.

[Dave200]

swisstoni said:

otolith said:

JagLover said:

Well yes

One reason for the collapse of the Tory vote is their failure to deal with illegal migration. Keeping it going for "popularity reasons" doesn't seem a winning strategy. Latest poll has Tories at 20%.

They made it an issue and invited the public to judge them on their performance on it because they thought it was something they could be seen to fix. Catastrophically wrongly.

Right so they created a massive crisis costing £6m a day and really pissing off their base support.

And the plan was to quickly fix it and voila! Heroes!

Just the small matter of the courts, the house of lords, international law and refugee conventions to navigate. Oh and the French to cooperate.

Yes it’s really got the ring of truth about it.

Expecting this incompetent shower to have thought far ahead enough to have formed a plan is wishful thinking. However, schemes like the Rwanda nonsense were attempts to show they are right-wing-tough on illegal migrants. It's fundamentally a case of desperately trying to fix a systemic problem that they've watched grow worse and done nothing significant to address in the past 14 years.

[Dagnir]

Dave200 said:

No. Those racists have been busy banging on about how we're a soft touch, and how we'll give a home and income to anyone who turns up on these shores regardless of status. That's not the same as saying that the system has been comprehensively broken by an incompetent government, resulting in the need to house hundreds of thousands of people while we process the backlog created by the system failure. Why weren't we seeing the same uproar about these people arriving 20 years ago when we took the same number of applications? Because then it wasn't politically prudent for right-wing agitators to spin it as a problem with the arrivals themselves rather than the system that processes them.

Obviously no one could disagree about the government screwing things up royally.

...but how on earth can you say we're not a soft touch? I hate to say it but oh boy does that show your ignorance.

We had 1.1M immigrants enter last year.....how many, regardless of status, application success etc. we're send back.

1% if you're lucky??

Even if your application is rejected, you get left in the country to do as you please.


So essentially yes, if you get here, you get to stay...


'Soft touch' is generous...

[Dagnir]

Mrr T said:

Dagnir said:

Mrr T said:

The UK has agreed its neither morally wrong or illegal to enter and claim asylum if you are entitled to it.

The UK has also agreed to prostrate itself to the entire world and let 1.1M people in last year.


I don't trust the UK, its goals or its motives.....they certainly aren't acting for the benefit of the British.

Assuming you are a UK citizens, this means you do not trust yourself!!!!!!

Hey little buddy.....can you give your phone back to your Dad, please?

[chrispmartha]

Dagnir said:

Dave200 said:

No. Those racists have been busy banging on about how we're a soft touch, and how we'll give a home and income to anyone who turns up on these shores regardless of status. That's not the same as saying that the system has been comprehensively broken by an incompetent government, resulting in the need to house hundreds of thousands of people while we process the backlog created by the system failure. Why weren't we seeing the same uproar about these people arriving 20 years ago when we took the same number of applications? Because then it wasn't politically prudent for right-wing agitators to spin it as a problem with the arrivals themselves rather than the system that processes them.

Obviously no one could disagree about the government screwing things up royally.

...but how on earth can you say we're not a soft touch? I hate to say it but oh boy does that show your ignorance.

We had 1.1M immigrants enter last year.....how many, regardless of status, application success etc. we're send back.

1% if you're lucky??

Even if your application is rejected, you get left in the country to do as you please.


So essentially yes, if you get here, you get to stay...


'Soft touch' is generous...

You seem to have a problem distinguishing immigrants with asylum seekers and illegal immigrants

[chrispmartha]

Dagnir said:

Mrr T said:

Dagnir said:

Mrr T said:

The UK has agreed its neither morally wrong or illegal to enter and claim asylum if you are entitled to it.

The UK has also agreed to prostrate itself to the entire world and let 1.1M people in last year.


I don't trust the UK, its goals or its motives.....they certainly aren't acting for the benefit of the British.

Assuming you are a UK citizens, this means you do not trust yourself!!!!!!

Hey little buddy.....can you give your phone back to your Dad, please?

The irony

[Dave200]

Dagnir said:

Dave200 said:

No. Those racists have been busy banging on about how we're a soft touch, and how we'll give a home and income to anyone who turns up on these shores regardless of status. That's not the same as saying that the system has been comprehensively broken by an incompetent government, resulting in the need to house hundreds of thousands of people while we process the backlog created by the system failure. Why weren't we seeing the same uproar about these people arriving 20 years ago when we took the same number of applications? Because then it wasn't politically prudent for right-wing agitators to spin it as a problem with the arrivals themselves rather than the system that processes them.

Obviously no one could disagree about the government screwing things up royally.

...but how on earth can you say we're not a soft touch? I hate to say it but oh boy does that show your ignorance.

We had 1.1M immigrants enter last year.....how many, regardless of status, application success etc. we're send back.

1% if you're lucky??

Even if your application is rejected, you get left in the country to do as you please.


So essentially yes, if you get here, you get to stay...


'Soft touch' is generous...

You're aware that most immigration is legal, right? So why would we want to "send them home"? The overwhelming majority of that 1.1m are people who arrived here on completely legal student, family and work visas. Only 50,000 of that 1.1m was asylum.

Why does taking 50,000 asylum seekers, equivalent to less than 1% of our population, who've passed through our asylum system checks, seem like such a big problem?

[Dagnir]

chrispmartha said:

What nonsense indeed.

We do have an obligation to accept asylum seekers whether you like it or not.

You do realise the French take more Asylum seekers in than the UK don’t you?

No moral obligation and the legal obligation should be scrapped or reworded to protect countries that are willing to help them from being abused.


France should take more than us. A lot more....they are closer to the mess in the middle east and don't have a natural moat.

[cheesejunkie]

chrispmartha said:

You seem to have a problem distinguishing immigrants with asylum seekers and illegal immigrants

Quite a few seem to suffer that.

If they understood the difference they might be more capable of fixing the problem. But I suspect some quite like being ignorant of the facts and don't really want to fix the problem anywhere near as much as they like complaining about it.

[Dave200]

chrispmartha said:

Dagnir said:

Dave200 said:

No. Those racists have been busy banging on about how we're a soft touch, and how we'll give a home and income to anyone who turns up on these shores regardless of status. That's not the same as saying that the system has been comprehensively broken by an incompetent government, resulting in the need to house hundreds of thousands of people while we process the backlog created by the system failure. Why weren't we seeing the same uproar about these people arriving 20 years ago when we took the same number of applications? Because then it wasn't politically prudent for right-wing agitators to spin it as a problem with the arrivals themselves rather than the system that processes them.

Obviously no one could disagree about the government screwing things up royally.

...but how on earth can you say we're not a soft touch? I hate to say it but oh boy does that show your ignorance.

We had 1.1M immigrants enter last year.....how many, regardless of status, application success etc. we're send back.

1% if you're lucky??

Even if your application is rejected, you get left in the country to do as you please.


So essentially yes, if you get here, you get to stay...


'Soft touch' is generous...

You seem to have a problem distinguishing immigrants with asylum seekers and illegal immigrants

I suspect he's seen the 1.1m figure quoted by some right-wing agitant source like GBNews or similar, and just parroted it without thinking to fact-check. A bit like the chap earlier who felt confident enough to talk about how Germany provides for asylum seekers without even bothering to Google what he'd been fed. And these are probably the same people who tell us all about how bad "MSM" are.

[Vanden Saab]

Dave200 said:

crankedup5 said:

Dave200 said:

Wombat3 said:

Dave200 said:

The backlog of applications has grown from 4,000 to almost 150,000 since the Tories took power. Yet actual asylum claims per year are barely any higher now than they were 20 years ago. All they've done to try and solve it, in the loosest sense of the word, is to put people in hotels and throw money at this Rwanda nonsense. Systematic underinvestment in the processing system has destroyed it, making the UK an easy target for people with spurious claims and holding up valid applications. If we had a working system, that processed valid claims in the same way that France and Germany do, then the number of people on boats would drop overnight. France targets to resolve asylum claims in 6 months, and is pretty successful. The average processing time in the UK is closer to 2 years. But again, this doesn't fit a right wing narrative.

All well and good, but how you are supposed to process people when you don't even know who they are, where they have come from and why they left there in the first place?

(because they have, mostly purposefully, turned up without any paperwork.)

You can't just grant asylum to anyone that turns up without papers and neither can you refuse it because they might be genuine refugees.

I've never seen a credible answer to how you deal with that quickly and efficiently short of making some pretty arbitrary decisions.

If you are going to investigate every case to try & get the answers then its bound to take time.

I'd probably consider asking France and Germany, as they seem capable of processing applications much faster than the UK.

Either way, the Reform gang have classically forced us down a dead end here. There were less than 50,000 asylum seekers allowed to stay in the UK in 2023, which is less than 1% of the population and a drop in the ocean. It's a moot point that only exists for political posturing.

And the remainder of asylum seekers from last years entry are still awaiting processing.
And yet the Country cannot support that level of asylum seekers due to inadequate infrastructure.
Although the Home Office has secured 16,000 rental homes ready for use. Just need to catch up with other services provisions. Have you tried to get a medical services appointment lately.

As discussed, asylum applications are currently no higher than they were 20 years ago. Yet somehow the Tories have allowed the backlog of cases to grow from 4,000 to almost 150,000 on their watch. You're digging in the wrong hole. If I was being uncharitable I'd say you have an axe to grind.

What happened in 1998 that had a major impact on the numbers of asylum seekers waiting for their decision or deciding on their options after that decision?

[Rufus Stone]

Dagnir said:

We had 1.1M immigrants enter last year.....how many, regardless of status, application success etc. we're send back.

How many were given express permission to reside in the UK?

[Dave200]

Rufus Stone said:

Dagnir said:

We had 1.1M immigrants enter last year.....how many, regardless of status, application success etc. we're send back.

How many were given express permission to reside in the UK?

I wouldn't bother. I suspect he's memorised the 1.1m figure in a fit of rage, and not even bothered to go as far as to check what the net migration was that year.

[S600BSB]

Dave200 said:

They made it an issue and hoped that they could weaponise the racists and xenophobes into a more polarised right-wing base. Turns out that they were too incompetent to even do that, and they've haemorrhaged support as a result.

It’s one of the really interesting things about this government. Not only are they really poor at the governing side of things - policy development and delivery etc - but they are also really bad at the politics - hence Rishi putting his credibility on the line with the stupid Rwanda policy.

[chrispmartha]

Dagnir said:

chrispmartha said:

What nonsense indeed.

We do have an obligation to accept asylum seekers whether you like it or not.

You do realise the French take more Asylum seekers in than the UK don’t you?

No moral obligation and the legal obligation should be scrapped or reworded to protect countries that are willing to help them from being abused.

So we do have an obligation then.